Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I wouldn't go so far as to call the extra links spam. They are not helpful to SEO. They just add extra links to your page.

If you sincerely believe they are helpful for users, then leave them. Otherwise, I would recommend removing them.

That may be true, but my question was...how EXACTLY would you use that data to make a business decision?

The point I was trying to make is....

Google devalues a tremendous amount of links based on spaminess and other factors. PA and DA were not fully aligned with PR previously. They did offer insight into a site's backlinks but we accepted it could differ from Google based on various factors such as:

• Linkscape does not crawl as deeply or as fast as Google

• OSE also cannot differentiate between a "good" link and a bad one.

• OSE also cannot differentiate between a sidebar link, a footer link and an in-content link

Please don't get me wrong. I like OSE and use it daily. I often see SEOs and site owners trying to use PA or DA in a manner that, in my opinion, it is not effective. I use PA and DA as an indicator, not the determining factor.

For example, I may see a new site which is well designed, has fantastic content and a passionate owner. I know this site will grow over time and would gladly pursue a link from it. On the other hand, I may see a site with great PA and DA, but it is not ranking well due to Panda issues. Clearly these issues affect the value of any links received.

There are many other examples I can share but the point is, you can use the PA and DA as-is and gain value from them. Penguin is undergoing a major update which will likely further change the link landscape. There is so much volatility related to links right now it is hard for a software company to invest money devising a link measurement system which will likely need to undergo a major change before it is published. My two cents.

Hi Matt.

Perhaps I misunderstood the question but I believe Toren only wishes to prevent the subdomain from being indexed. If you restrict subdomain access by IP it would prevent visitors from accessing the content which I don't believe is the goal.

A 302 is designed as a TEMPORARY redirect.

How temporary? I like to think of it in terms of hours. That makes it a lot clearer when thinking "how long is too long". For the most part, 302's should not be used. There are some corner cases where a 302 is the best solution, but in my experience most of the times 302s are implemented inappropriately and should not be used.

A 302 is harmful to your rankings as it prevents your PR from flowing naturally throughout your site. If you are using a 302 for internal linking, you are definitely damaging your SEO. For external links, a 301 is used when the content has been permanently moved to a new location. I am a bit confused regarding your implementation of a 301 for a "buy now" button. That sounds more like a direct link, and I am not clear why a redirect is being used.

A final point. Affiliates pointing to their master site should use nofollow links to be compliant with Google's policies.

Rob, anchor text is important but footer links are low value. I wouldn't focus the links with that level of detail. For your company, I would simply recommend using your company's name. If your company name is Acme Web Design then the footer look would be something like "Developed by Acme Web Design". The text "Acme Web Design" would form the anchor text and link to your home page.

To directly answer your question, you can contact the help desk [email protected] or http://www.seomoz.org/about/contact

Indirectly, I agree with Francisco. What is going on that you are trying to crawl so much? If you have multiple sites, I would recommend setting up a Campaign for each site and you will be crawled once/week.

If you desire more crawling, I recommend using Screaming Frog. It is free for small sites (500 URLs) and $99 EU for a full license. With this tool you can crawl all you like.

Toren, I would not recommend that solution. There is nothing to prevent Googlebot from crawling your site via almost any IP. If you found 100 IPs used by the crawler and blocked them all, there is nothing to stop the crawler from using IP #101 next month. Once the subdomain's content is located and indexed, it will be a headache fixing the issue.

The best solution is always going to be a noindex meta tag on the pages you do not wish to be indexed. If that method is too much work or otherwise undesirable, you can use the robots.txt solution. There is no circumstance I can imagine where you would modify your htaccess file to block googlebot.

Hello.

You have left your site open in a manner which is not recommended. Please take a look at the following URL: http://www.lampslightingandmore.com/images/. On a properly secured server, you should receive a 404 Page Not Found or Access Denied type of error. Since the folder is left open, a Google crawler found it and you are seeing the results.

The means to secure your site varies based on your software configuration. If you are on an Apache web server (the most common setup) then these settings are controlled by your htaccess file. I am not an htaccess expert but I believe adding the following code to your .htaccess file at the top will fix the issue:

Options -Indexes

The links you are referring to are all 302 codes. They do not pass any PR or link juice. They are not hurting your site in any manner.

You should not expect OSE to match Google.

Google is a company that generates ten billion in search revenue a quarter. OSE and Majestic are the two best crawlers not owned by a search engine, and neither company earns even 1% of what Google does, so their crawlers cannot compete.

With that said, Google does not share all of its data either. If you want the most comprehensive link data, it is best to use numerous backlink tools and combine the data.

Hi Diane.

I was curious so I took a look at the site.

Basic package - the only service they provide is to submit your sitemap 12x per month. Very simple and cheap sitemap software will do this for you free as many times as you want. No value at all. Not really worth mentioning but they submit to 100 search engines. Since Bing+Yahoo+Google = 98% of traffic, and Ask = 1%, the rest really don't matter.

I looked at their remaining packages and I see nothing of any tangible benefit to a SEOmoz PRO member.

Looking at their reviews, 25 of 49 reviews offer a 1 out of 5 star rating. http://www.ciao.co.uk/Reviews/123_reg_co_uk__5111134

Is This Service a Waste Of Money

I haven't used the service but everything I looked at seems to indicate it is worth purchasing.

The link you shared is perfect. Near the top there is a link for OPTIONS. Click on it and you will be on this page: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/core.html#options

I want to very clearly state you should not make changes to your .htaccess file unless you are comfortable working with code. The slightest mistake and your entire site becomes unavailable. You can also damage the security of your site.

With that said, if you decide to proceed anyway you can add the text I shared to the top of your .htaccess file. You definitely should BACK UP the file before making any changes.

The suggestion vishalkialani made was to rename your /images folder to something else, perhaps /image. The problem is that if your site was not dynamically coded, you would break your image links.

Pure fluff, a waste of time and it makes it harder for a good SEO to do their job.

The analogy I like to use is an electrician doing their job. You want to move power from point A to point B. You want to monitor the flow of that power as well. If you have 10 power cables then you can clearly view your power flow. If you have 1010 cables but only 10 of them are actually flowing power then it's a mess to sort through.

The only caveat I will add is there are some sites with good DA and decent PA which can be manipulated to flow rank to your site. For example there are some Chinese government sites that don't nofollow links and a few asian blogs as well. I am confident Google will catch on but for now, it works. I don't believe the submitters you shared use these particular sites but they are examples. They could anchor their sites which lack value with one or two sites that actually flow link juice right now, but it's only until Google pulls the plug.

You can use Moz, WooRank or other tools to review a site, obtain a grade along with other helpful information; however, you cannot depend on these tools to even come close to performing the type of analysis you are seeking. To use an analogy, you can use a template to draw up a will or other legal document, but if it is really important you would always work directly with a lawyer. The same applies for other fields whether it is a medical opinion or SEO advice.

Let's break down one component of your request: "URLs ok? :: Is the URL mapping ok, old to new, best web page?"

What EXACTLY is meant by URLs ok? A full breakdown would be:

1. Protocol. Are pages served as http or https? Which is best for the site?

2. Is the domain name optimal for the site?

3. What is the best URL paths for the site? If you operate a clothing e-commerce site should the primary category be the brand? gender (men vs women)? kids? something else such as clothing type (shirts / pants / suits / etc). That decision cannot be made by any tool.

4. What about id numbers? For a small site, a url will appear cleanest without product ids. For a large site, an id number is needed in the URL to ensure fast page loads as each URL needs to be delivered by a database and text searches take too much time. Even if you have a small site now, what are the future growth plans? How does a tool adjust for these factors?

5. Should the brand name be included in the URL? How about the product name? How about the product description?

6. Best web page? Sites often provide numerous pages on closely related topics. Let's say you asked on Moz what is the best page to discuss web crawling tools. There are numerous articles discussing Moz's tool, Zenu, Screaming Frog and other tools. There are articles which compare web crawlers. How can a tool look at your URL and decide which page is ideal? By date? Text match? Google has billions invested in trying to provide such feedback and they clearly get it wrong at times.

There is certainly feedback a tool can offer. For example, if a url ends in .html the tool can recognize the technology extension and recommend to drop it. Very simple. With enough time and money, tools can be built to do almost anything. You presented a laundry list of needs, each of which requires a professional opinion. Even if you were to find a tool which provided responses to all of the inquiries you shared, I am highly confident the responses would not be optimal.

I hope you find this response helpful.

-Ryan

Regex is an expression language which is very useful for replacements. It is used for building dynamic strings whether they be for redirects, rss feeds, etc. I know Regex is used on *nix servers but I am not familiar with IIS redirects.

The bottom line, if you can verbally share a pattern of how the URLs should be redirected on your site, an expression can be created to represent that pattern. Even if that pattern only applied to 10% of the 3000 duplicate URLs, it is preferable compared to creating 300 individual redirects.

Hi Jamie.

It is common for internal pages and home pages to share some content which can lead to competition for keywords or phrases. A typical example might be the home page of a web design company may have an internal page /web-design.

The suggestion I would offer is to choose one keyword or phrase for your home page and stick to it. All other keywords and phrases will be focused on internal pages. The keyword for your home page is often your brand name. If you owned AcmeWebDesign.com then your home page would focus phrases such as "Acme Web" and "Acme Web Design" whereas the phrase "website design" and "web design" would be focused upon your /web-design page.

To help support this direction, all the SEO signals for your home page and inner pages would need to be in alignment:

Home page: Title "Acme Web Design", H1 tag "Acme Website Design", etc.

Inner page: Title: "Web Design", H1 tag "Website Design", etc.

The last piece is internal linking. From your home page you can offer some content such as "Acme web specializes is high quality web design...." where "web design" would be anchor text linking to the /web-design page. This link sends a strong signal to Google that your /web-design page should be listed in search results for that term. Combined with the other signals sent by your header and H1 tags the correct page should be listed in search results.

Does this provide any SEO value to the receiving site?

No

Has anyone  experienced problems doing this?

There are not any problems that can arise from this issue unless the target site which belongs to the SEO receives a penalty. If you stick with SEOs whom use only white hat techniques this should never be a problem.

Does this negatively impact the site with the links?

No. If you want to really look at this topic under a microscope then a very small amount of PR would flow from your site to the SEO's site. How small? If your site had 100 links per page and the PR flowed evenly to all links then we are talking about 1%. Google has inferred they devalue footer links so most likely it is a fraction of one percent.

If the SEO is doing their job well and you are pleased with their performance, I would suggest leaving the link. If you are unhappy with the SEO's performance and would not recommend their services, remove the link.

Personally, the link is something I discuss with clients upfront. I inform them exactly the words I shared in the above paragraph. If you are happy with me, leave the link and otherwise remove it.

Hi George. These items you referred to are not mechanical as you suggest.

Title - How do you determine a "good" title? If your site is Wikipedia, a tool can certainly be used. Wikipedia titles are short and focused on a single keyword. The H1 tag and URL match or closely mirror the title. The first words of the first sentence also use the title.

For sites other than Wikipedia, how do you measure the quality of a title? Tools can share whether or not a keyword is identified in the title. They can share whether a title has more than 70 characters. If you desire optimal results for the site, other factors must be evaluated. Let's look at the title of this Q&A and just think of the first part you shared, "Web Site Migration Testing". Should it be "Web Site" or "Website"? "Testing" or "Tests". What about "Website Migration" or "Best Website Migration Tools". Or "What are the Best Website Migration Tools?" There are dozens of other variants. How will a tool decide upon the optimal title? Will it consider keyword research or existing content on the site? What about competitiveness....and so forth.

The same logic applies to the rest of the criteria you mentioned. For ALT tags the first and foremost consideration I use is "Does the ALT tag accurately represent the image? If a blind person heard the ALT tag read to them, would they be able to accurately describe the image?" As an SEO, I base image naming and content first and foremost on the user experience and then make minor adjustments to improve SEO. Theoretically, you can have a tool recognize images, provide the ALT text and adjust for SEO, but we are a long way off from that vision becoming a live tool in the field we can use.

You can certainly use tools to gather that feedback for specific elements such as title length, does a meta description exist, does an ALT tag exist, etc. As to determining whether those elements are ideally optimized to provide the best results for a particular client, that requires the human element in my experience.

A test was done a few months ago. While the test concluded a hyphen harmed the rankings, the test only involved one example (3 sites) and the content was not the same, although the content was moved between sites.

http://blog.silktide.com/2011/06/how-one-tiny-hyphen-destroyed-our-seo-efforts/

There is a lot of ground to cover as relevancy is not a yes or no metric. The New York Times is probably not directly relevant to your site but they have some relevancy to every site as they cover all subjects to some degree. With that understood I would choose the high authority site generally speaking.

Why would a site that has no relevancy link to you?

In my experience link counts are a meaningless metric. You have twice mentioned having 500+ links. Many individuals can change a single forum signature and gain literally thousands of links overnight. One of those links has some value and all the rest combined have almost no value.

The important consideration is number of unique linking root domains, and the statistics of the pages which link to you. Based on OSE, your site lacks any real off-site support. In looking at your site, there is no social engagement either.

I can point out that OSE can be up to 60 days behind, but you also mentioned you have not done any recent SEO work for the site so I presume that means no recent link building.

I agree with you that your site deserves a better ranking, but you also need to acknowledge there are a LOT of sites out there with good enough content to earn rankings ahead of you, and many with more off-page support. Even this SEOmoz Q&A thread with an exact phrase match only ranks around 500 for the phrase search.

i should state once more i rank very very well in bing

I used to make that comparison but I learned some time ago it is completely worthless. I have repeatedly found instances where I ranked as #1 in Bing and not in the top 50 for Google, and vice-versa. Bing and Google are two separate companies which pull data independently and have completely different algorithms and standards. The results tend to line up only for the best sites.

Have look at page 50 or 60 you will see some that are hard to believe the should be above me

I did exactly as you asked, and I disagree. I already mentioned this Q&A which beats your page clearly on the offpage factors.

At the bottom of page 50 of Google.com SERPs for "a local Perth web development company" is the following result: http://www.exa.com.au/local-web-services.php

It is not a great result. I see link spam on the page along with other SEO issues, but that page also has a DA of 69, PA of 41 and should definitely outrank you (my opinion).

I know this is your site. I know you have put time and effort into the site. My best suggestion is to take a deep breath and a fresh analysis of your site. You have plenty of opportunities. If you wish shoot me an e-mail [email protected] and I can share some specific action items I noticed. I assume you have noticed many of them as well.

Greenman,

As I suspected many of the dates of the bad URLs are old, some even being from 2010. I took a look at your home page specifically checking for the URL you highlighted in red on the 4th image. It is not present.

My belief is your issue has been resolved by the changes you made. I recommend you continue to monitor WMT for any NEW errors. If you see any fresh dates with 404, that would be a concern which should be investigated. Otherwise the problem appears to be resolved.

I also very much support Sha's reply above.

Doesn't the internet have enough 300 word "average" articles? Do you really think any of these articles will benefit any users?

How about take your time and write one amazing and helpful article. Search your topic in Google and examine the results from the top 10 sites. Now write an article that is better then all of them. When your article is complete, publish it and know that you made the internet a better place but providing an informative, helpful article that was better then anything else already in existence.

After your article is complete, go out and let the world know about it. Join communities which are relevant to your keyword and, when appropriate, link to your article in a helpful way. Your site will be better for it, and if it is truly a great article then you will attract links, social awareness and all the benefits.

Alex's response is great.

To answer your question, the SEOmoz tool will issue a warning any time there is over 100 links on a given page. I notice your home page is well under 100 links. What is the URL to the page which gives an error?

I would suggest you install the MOZbar. It is an extension that works with FireFox or Chrome browsers and is very helpful for SEO analysis. http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar

Greenman,

I have a simple rule I learned over time. NEVER EVER EVER EVER use robots.txt unless there is absolutely no other method possible to achieve the required result. It is simply bad SEO and will cause problems. The best robots.txt file is a blank one.

When you use CMS software like WP, then it is required for some areas but it's use should be minimized.

How can I add a 301 redirect to a page that doesn't exit?

You have presented 404 errors. Those errors are links TO pages which don't exist, correct? If so, I believe Sha was recommending you can create a 301 redirect from the page which does not exist, to the most relevant page that does exist.

It's a bit of semantics but if you chose to do such, you can create 301s from or to pages that don't exist.

I am not aware of any relevancy considerations within the OSE tool. I believe the tool merely acts based on the DA/PA of the page/site offering the link.

If you position your cursor somewhere on your home page, right-click and choose VIEW SOURCE you will notice towards the top of the page the following code:

<title>Free Games Online - Browser Games - Δωρεάν παιχνίδια - Το πρώτο ανεξάρτητο ελληνικό portal για free games online. Παίξτε δωρεάν... freegamesonline.grtitle>

Something within your Joomla software is causing the title to be presented as the title and the meta description combined.

I notice with your screenshot that is not a native Joomla screen. I presume you are using a SEO extension already. It is likely a setting is off within that extension. I would suggest visiting the forums of the extension's creator and asking them why your title and meta descriptions are being merged.

The good thing is you are using the proper tools on your site and discovering issues which need to be fixed. The solution in this case depends on discovering how this problem began in the first place. This seems to be the result of either an issue with an SEO extension, or someone manually modified one of the php page templates for your site.

scrubs and beyond has 2463 terms ranking in the top 50 while the other site only has 725 terms that rank in the top 50.

It sounds like you are pulling that data from a particular SEO analytics tool. This data in and of itself offers no means for investigation and is not helpful. There are many possible explanations.

They also rank number 6 for the term "cherokee scrubs" with no backlinks with that term.

This is the one piece of information you shared which gives me something to work with.

The following URL is ranked #6 for a Google.com search of "cherokee scrubs": http://www.scrubsandbeyond.com/Brands-Cherokee-Medical-Scrubs.html

The page is very well optimized for the search term. The page title is an exact match which is an extremely important ranking factor. The URL contains the keywords, the page header is "FREE SHIPPING - Cherokee Scrubs", the keywords are used in alt text and the content. The page has a PA of 35 with 16 linking domains. This page has clearly earned a spot on the first page of Google results. The web page appears professional. If this site added additional SEO practices such as managing their internal linking better and earning backlinks with the proper anchor text, this page could appear in the top 3 results.

The Blueskyscrubs.com site does not have a competitive page for "cherokee scrubs". Take a look at the site: search for blueskyscrubs.com. The top result is a page without the term "Cherokee" used at all. When I perform a site search on the site, they do not show the term "cherokee scrubs" used on the site at all.

The search results appear perfectly valid in every regard. I am happy to help in any way I can, but you sound like a competitor who is upset you are being outranked on some terms. There are many aspects of SEO. I work full time on just SEO and I learn things every day. You might consider hiring an SEO to help you improve your site results, or digging in deeper on the SEO analysis. Tools which offer high level overviews of how many keywords a site rank for are not going to help you achieve you end goal which should be to maximize your site's traffic and convert visitors into buyers.

There is a very clear line in this regard.

Yahoo directory does not charge to be added to their directory. They are charging to review your website. They have specific standards. They do not accept all sites. If your site passes the review you are included in their directory. If your site does not pass, the fee is non-refundable and your site is not included. That is the line which Google permits.

If a site charges and any site which pays is included, that is not acceptable. If a site charges and any site which is rejected receives a refund, that is not acceptable.

Yahoo and BOTW are two examples of permitted directories where a fee is required to be added. BBB and other organizations charge a fee to be accepted into their organization then, once accepted, you receive a listing in their directory. That is accepted as well.

An offsite established blog such as Google's blogspot or WordPress.com can benefit your site. Those types of sites overcome several of the challenges which arise when you try to set up a blog.

Advantages: quick and easy to set up, a unique C block for hosting, no worries about site maintenance, etc.

Disadvantages:

• your blog content would not be on your site so would not benefit from the main site's DA. Also, your main site wont benefit from the links your content will hopefully generate. While you can link from your blog to the main site, it is not as beneficial as having a direct link to your site.

• as Alan shared, your main site would also lose out on the freshness benefits a quality blog can offer

• internal linking is also a fantastic means of properly directing the flow of PR throughout your site. With a single site, there is software which can automatically generate all your internal links as appropriate. For an external site, you would need to manually create all the links which is a lot more work.

Overall the best results should be achieved by integrating a blog into your existing site. You could choose an external blog and it can benefit your site, but not as much as an internal blog would.

Hi Croozie.

The challenge with your site is the volume of pages. Most large sites with 100k+ pages have huge SEO opportunities. Ideally you need a team which can manually review every page of your site to ensure it is optimized correctly. Such a team would be a large expense which many site owners choose to avoid. The problem is your site quality and SEO are negatively impacted.

Whenever a page is removed from your site or otherwise becomes unavailable, a plan should be in place PRIOR to removing the page. The plan should address the simple question: how will we handle traffic to the page whether it is from a search engine or a person who bookmarked the page or a link. The suggested answer is the same whether your site has 10 pages or a million pages:

• if the product is being replaced with a very similar product, or you have a very similar product, then you can choose to 301 the page to the new product. If the product is truly similar, then the 301 redirect is a win for everyone.

Example A: You offer a Casio watch model X1000. You stop carrying this watch and replace it with Casio watch model X1001. It is the same watch design but the new model has a slight variation such as a larger dial. Most users who were interested in the old page would be interested in the new page.

Example B: You offered the 2011 version of the Miami Dolphins T-shirt. It is now 2012 and you have the 2012 version of the shirt which is a different design. You can use a 301 to direct users to the latest design. Some users may be unhappy and want the old design, but it is still probably the right call for most users.

Example You discontinue the Casio X1000 and do not have a very close replacement. You could 301 the page to the Casio category page, or you could let it 404.

The best thing to do in each case is to put on your user hat and ask yourself what would be the most helpful thing you can do to assist a person seeking the old content. There is absolutely nothing wrong with allowing a page to 404. It is a natural part of the internet.

One last point. Be sure your 404 page is optimized, especially considering how many 404s you present. The page should have the normal site navigation along with a search function. Help users find the content they seek.

Link exchanges are a violation of Google's guidelines. The links can be devalued or much worse upon being caught. I would advise not exchanging links in this manner.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

There are two benefits to 301 redirecting these pages to your new site:

1. You will capture any traffic which these pages have generated. Old bookmarks, e-mailed links, etc.

2. You will retain any backlinks from those pages.

I only looked at the one link you shared and there were no visible backlinks. I would suggest taking a look at your Google Analytics for the past 30 days to determine if these pages have any traffic. If the other pages have no backlinks and are of this low quality and no meaningful traffic, I would not bother with redirecting them.

If you remove them, just make sure your 404 Page Not Found web page is helpful. It should include your standard site navigation along with a search box so visitors can find the content they seek.

I would be happy to help in any way I can. If you are willing to share your URL, perhaps you can gain some direct, actionable feedback from mozzers which will help your site even more.

As for the example you shared, links are important, but they are only part of the equation. There are over 200 factors used to ultimately determine ranking of a site for a particular term. You can rank very well for a keyword or phrase even without any backlinks at all. It all depends on how well you perform on the other factors, and how well your competition performs.

I am wondering how to get on the first page of a competitive term without getting a back link using an exact anchor text.

Every term is different. SEO is a 100% pure competition. If you make up a new term such as "Moztekan Jewelry" then you can rank #1 with no backlinks at all. You mentioned a competitive term so it depends on exactly how each of the other 10 results on the first page perform with respect to their SEO metrics.

The Cherokee example shows a solid (not perfect) site which is well presented, authentic, has good content directly related to an exact search, and offers numerous on page SEO mechanics to support the ranking.

Previously I misunderstood your statement "with no backlinks with that term." I thought you meant the term was not used in backlinks. I looked at the page's links and the anchor text is mostly "cherokee medical scrubs" or "cherokee scrub pants". While not a perfect match, it is close enough to have a positive effect on search results.

My recommendation for you is to offer the best web page you can. Pick a search term that you feel will drive traffic to your site that would convert well. Perform a search and thoroughly examine the top 5 or more results. When you create your page, make it world class. Have it blow the doors off the other pages. The page should be linked from your site's home page. You can use a "latest news", "popular stories" or varies methods. See how well it ranks. If it is not on the first page of Google, share the URL and we can review the page and offer tips.

Hi Mills.

Your concerns are valid and it sounds like you are taking the right approach with the new site. There are numerous other means to establish local relevance without copying a page and simply adding the various city names.

Based on the example you shared, I would follow Robert's advice and create a single, top quality page for "Vasectomy Reversals" then add content to establish relevance for given locales. A few examples of how that can be accomplished:

• list the doctor's education and training. "Attended Univ of Texas - Austin, Undergraduate degree", "Attended Univ of Texas - San Antonio, Doctorate Degree", "Certified by the Texas Board of xyz in Dallas"

• list the doctor's work experience and locations

• list the doctor's current licenses. For example, he may be a licensed physician but each hospital has a process by which they approve doctors to work in their location. "Approved to practice by Dallas Medical Center", etc.

• any quality user-generated content and/or testimonials "....  John S. Dallas, TX"

Sha, your responses continuously offer outstanding actionable items which offer so much value. I love them so much as they offer such great ideas and demonstrate a lot of experience.

No.

Any ad links should be nofollow'd. Google certainly follows the rules with their own ads.

Hi Sally.

Without looking at the page it is hard to offer specific advise. If you can share an example product and blog URL, we can gain a better understanding of your implementation.

Using a generic example, let's say you are selling Cheerios.Your primary product page might be titled "Cheerios" and offer all the basic information about Cheerios such as it's ingredients, nutritional facts information, how many ounces are in the box, etc.

If you wrote a blog article, you would not want to duplicate your product page content. It can be very helpful to address topics such as "Cheerios and a Healthy Heart Diet".

Each page on your site should focus one or two keywords or phrases. Internal anchor text links are very helpful in helping avoid cannibalization issues and ensure the correct page is indexed for a given term. The important piece is your blog articles need to have a different focus then your product page.

What should be a proper SEO plan for a new website ?  Got any Plan PDF or Buleprint, which you can send me ?

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-seo-checklist-for-new-sites-whiteboard-friday?

For the client website , he is ranking on 4-7th pages for his 4 keywords. Whats should be the correct way or plan to start doing SEO for them and get them to the first page ?

Everyone will answer this question differently as there are many factors involved. My preference is to focus 100% of my efforts on onpage SEO until the site is solid. Off page SEO, namely link building, never ends. Onsite SEO can be completed to a point and then you move on.

Otherwise there is a need for keyword analysis. The point is not only to get the site to the 1st page, but to the top 3 results. Research shows the overwhelming majority of traffic is acquired by the top 3 results. Lower results still have value, especially on keywords with a lot of traffic, but you really want to focus on getting in the top 3.

I feel like, doing competitive analysis is lacking with us and we are not good at evaluating that step. Whats the bet way to do competitive analysis ?

The first step is visiting your top 3 competitor's sites. Examine every detail from the navigation to their content to their overall design and layout. Try to determine where your competitors are doing a better job then you are and catch up or beat them. Once the onsite analysis is complete, it is time to examine links.

We are looking to build more and more links to the website . Whats the best way to make links ?

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links

http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professional-guide-to-link-building-2011

If you have similar questions, try a quick SEARCH using the box in the upper-right corner. The SEOmoz internal search results are quite excellent. I am not sure how they sort, but the first few results will usually cover your needs.

Very nice article from Danndy Sullivan you offered Anthony. Thumbs up for sharing it.

Check your crawl report. Every link will be listed along with the error (404 in this case). After locating each link check the referrer field. That field shows the URL of the page for the broken link.

That response indicates there is no manual action being taken by Google. That means your site is receiving an algorithmic penalty. Your site's re-appearance had nothing to do with your reconsideration request being filed.

I think Gianluca shares a good assessment as to why your site may have issues. Try to present your page for users, not search engines. Someone has clearly spent a lot of time stuffing the title, meta tags and page with a lot of unappealing content which appears to exist to manipulate search engine rankings. Try following Gianluca's advice and your rankings should stabilize.

Keep in mind that any page which requires a user to log in to view it wont be crawled anyway. There is no need to block these types of pages.

I mentioned this information because many shopping cart pages like the "view cart" page require a user to be logged in to access the page. It depends on the particular cart configuration.

Why am I getting this [duplicate content] error?

Because the pages are almost exact duplications of each other. I compared the black and camel colors and there was only one sentence on the page which was altered, along with 3 images and the selected color option. 95% of the pages are identical.

Is there any best way to address?

Yes, the canonical meta tag is designed for this type of situation. A search engine will presently crawl all three pages and then pick one page to index. Rather then the search engine make the choice, you should. I would recommend adding the canonical tag to the headers of your HTML code. Pick whichever color is the most popular and present it in search engines.

If you feel it is really important to have all three pages indexed, you could take another approach. Add additional content to each page which is unique. For the black shoes, you can add images of someone wearing them with matching outfits and add content about famous people who were seen wearing those shoes. Also you can allow users to add comments to each shoe. The comments would add additional uniqueness to each page.

If you choose the latter approach, it is very important you write for readers, not for the search engines. I know your end goal may be to have the page indexed, but if you add junk content, or simply re-arrange words and replace synonyms search engines will likely detect it and downgrade the page's ranking.